A friend of mine visited me a few years back, and noticed
that I had a “thing for trees”. She noticed a few pictures around my house that
showed bare deciduous trees in the winter, and inquired about them. Some people prefer trees with blossoms such
as we see in the spring, or broad green leaves providing shade from the summer’s
heat, or a colorful palate of oranges, reds and yellows that burst forth in the
autumn, but for me, the winter tree has a beauty that is indescribably unique.
I never actually noticed the trees in the winter, unless they were covered with
a layer of ice and sparkled in the sunlight, until the Lord spoke to me of hope
in the dry seasons of life, and He used the winter tree to do it.
The trees in the winter stand isolated, reaching heavenward,
seemingly lifeless. They are void of leaves or other ornaments of beauty, and
appear naked against the landscape. They
bear up during blizzards and because they are leafless, they are not greatly moved
in the storms. The covering of leaves would in fact make them weak and
vulnerable to breaking and so while the winter tree almost appears abandoned it
is in reality, by the forethought of God, protected from the elements of this
world. I remember the day the Lord
showed me the absolute beauty of the lace-like branches, bare and naked,
against the sky. It was the most
beautiful I had ever seen a tree to be.
We are a bit like that.
To everything there
is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven (Eccl.3:1). “Everything” includes our life and our walk
with the Lord. There are seasons where
we feel connected to the Lord and all is well, and other seasons when we feel
spiritually “dry”, walking through a dry and thirsty land where there is no
water. (Ps.63:1) When we go through these dry seasons, we often become
perplexed and wonder if we’ve done something that broke our sense of communion
with the Lord. It is important to
examine ourselves to see if we have sinned against God, and to ask Him to reveal
anything in our lives that may have offended Him and created a break in our
fellowship. Certainly being imperfect,
we will probably come up with a few things that we suspect may have caused the
sky to become as brass to our prayers, but having confessed them, we claim that
promise that if we confess and repent of our sins, He is faithful and just to
forgive us of our sins and cleanse of all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9) If the
dry spell is due to sin, this remedies the problem if we are sincere.
However, not all such desert experiences are due to sin and
are, in fact, a part of the normal Christian life. Such seasons have been called “wilderness” or
“desert” experiences. We learn of our
weaknesses in such times and our dependence upon God. This is important to
understand because we have an adversary who would love nothing more than for a
Christian to become discouraged in such seasons of life. I’ve come to believe that all discouragement
is from the devil, who is the father of lies.(Jn.8:44) The only weapon against lies is truth.
The Word of God is the Sword of the Spirit, our weapon
(Eph.6:17), and when discouragement creeps in we search for the truth in
Scripture to counteract the lie, and cleave to it. This is how we exercise faith. This is how we
learn experientially the faithfulness of God.
If we never had the dry, winter season stripped of our ornamental
coverings we would not learn of His faithfulness or the power of the Word of
God against all discouragement. The Lord
your God has set the land before you, go up and possess it…do not fear nor be
discouraged (Dt.1:21) If God commands us not to be discouraged, He also has
provided for our need so that we are not discouraged. Faith grows when it is exercised, and the
promise of spring reassures us that this is just a season through which we all
must pass.
DJ
